Jaina View of Life

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur

Page 74

The Jaina Theory of the Soul
59
says, the Jains have a tenet of the size of the soul which is not shared by other philosophers. 58
Some philosohers like the Vaišeşikas, Democritus and the atomists, thought of the soul as atomic. Some others talked of the omnipresence of the soul. Jacobi says that the original Vaišeşika was not clear on this point. Some Samkhya writers preferred the soul to be infinitely small, while īśvara Kļşņa and later writers characterized it as all-pervading.39 The spatial view of the habitation of the soul had occupied the minds of the Upanişadic philosophers.
Upanişadic psychology agrees with the Aristotelian in localizing the soul in the heart. It was later thought that it was in the brain. Yogic and Tântric books recognized the cerebrochemical processes, and consciousness was traced to the brain. In the Taittiriyopanişud (1. 6. 1. 2) we read that the soul in the heart moves by a passage through the bones of the palate, right up to the skull, where the hair are made to part. The soul in the heart is called manomaya. In the Kausitaki Upanişad the soul is described as the master of all bodily functions. The sense depends on the soul as 'relatives on the rich'. The self is immanent in the whole body, and is hidden in it. This passage leads to the view, like the Jaina view, that the soul fills the body. Different other accounts are given in the Upanişads. In the Brhadaranyaka the self is described as small as a grain of rice or barley. In the Kathopanis ad we find that the soul is of the size of the thumb..o It dwells in the centre of the heart. In the Chandogya, it is said to be of the measure of the span between the head and the chin. William James traces the feeling of self to the cephalic movements. He says that the self of selves when carefully examined is found to consist mainly in the collection of these peculiar motions in the head or between the
38. Jacobi (Hermann): Ed. by Jina Vijaya Muni; Studies in Jainism,
p. 83. 39. Ibid. p. 84. 40. Kanade (R. D.): A Constructive Survey of Upunişadic Philosophy
p. 138, (1926).